Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ In the whole world there was not a more ardent believer in our imperishable nature, nor one more deeply interested in the belief. Do not let it be supposed that because I have not often recurred to Isora’s death (or because I have continued my history in a jesting and light tone) that that event ever passed from the memory which it had turned to bitterness and gall. Never in the masses of intrigue, in the festivals of pleasure, in the tumults of ambition, in the blaze of a licentious court, or by the rude tents of a barbarous host,—never, my buried love, had I forgotten thee! ”

“ Count Devereux, will you come with me to the Duchess’s?”
“What! the Duchess’s immediately after Lord Bolingbroke’s!—the Whig after the Tory: it would be as trying to one’s assurance as a change from the cold bath to the hot to one’s constitution.”
“Well, and what so delightful as a trial in which one triumphs? and a change in which one does not lose even one’s countenance?”
“Take care, my Lord,” said Bolingbroke, laughing; “those are dangerous sentiments for a man like you, to whom the hopes of two great parties are directed, to express so openly, even on a trifle and in a jest.” ”

“ Never was there a man who, without being very handsome, very rude, or very much in public life, had made unto himself more enemies than it had been my lot to make. How the rascals would all sneer and coin dull jests when they saw me so down in the world! The very old maids, who, so long as they thought me single, would have declared that the will was a fraud, would, directly they heard I was married, ask if Gerald was handsome, and assert, with a wise look, that my uncle knew well what he was about. Then the joy of the Lady Hasselton, and the curled lip of the haughty Tarleton! ”

“ Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. To be unamiable is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if I have but a few objects to love. You ask me my inducement to leave you. ‘The World’ will be sufficient answer. I cannot share your contempt of it, nor your fear. I am, and have been of late, consumed with a thirst,—eager, and burning, and unquenchable: it is ambition!”
“Oh, Morton!” ”

“ Would it have been possible for me, man of pleasure and of the world as I was thought to be,—no, my good uncle, though it went to my heart to wound thee so secretly, it would not have been possible for me, even if I had not coined my whole nature into love, even if Isora had not been to me what one smile of Isora’s really was,—it would not have been possible to have sacrificed so noble and so divine a heart, and made myself, in that sacrifice, a wretch forever. ”

“ From this train of reflection my mind soon directed itself to one far fiercer and more intense; and I felt my heart pause, as if congealing into marble, when I thought of Montreuil and anticipated justice.
It was nearly noon on the following day when we arrived at Lord———‘s house. We found that Gerald had left it the day before, for the enjoyment of the field-sports at Devereux Court, and thither we instantly proceeded.
It has often seemed to me that if there be, as certain ancient philosophers fabled, one certain figure pervading all nature, human and universal, it is the circle. ”

“ You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left England: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust you with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential. Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise; I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,—then,—long after,—now,—when my heart was and is the home of all withering and evil passions, Religion reigned,—reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant. Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the air with shapes of ghastly menace! ”

“ But you, Morton Devereux, you I always feared. I had seen from your childhood others whose nature was far stronger than mine yield and recoil at yours; I had seen the giant and bold strength of Gerald quail before your bent brow; I had seen even the hardy pride of Montreuil baffled by your curled lip and the stern sarcasm of your glance; I had seen you, too, in your wild moments of ungoverned rage, and I knew that if earth held one whose passions were fiercer than my own it was you. But your passions were sustained even in their fiercest excess ”

“ Can you ask it, Morton? But why will you leave us? Are we not all happy here, now? Now that there is no longer any barrier or difference between us,—now that I may look upon you, and listen to you, and love you, and own that I love you? Why will you leave us now? And [continued Aubrey, as if fearful of giving me time to answer] —and every one praises you so here; and my uncle and all of us are so proud of you. Why should you desert our affections merely because they are not new? Why plunge into that hollow and cold world which all who have tried it picture in such fearful hues? ”

“ I HAD now been several weeks at Paris; I had neither eagerly sought nor sedulously avoided its gayeties. It is not that one violent sorrow leaves us without power of enjoyment; it only lessens the power, and deadens the enjoyment: it does not take away from us the objects of life; it only forestalls the more indifferent calmness of age. The blood no longer flows in an irregular but delicious course of vivid and wild emotion; the step no longer spurns the earth; nor does the ambition wander, insatiable, yet undefined, over the million paths of existence: but we lose not our old capacities ”

“ The long galleries, the superb chambers, the scenes of revelry or of pomp, were like the court companions who amuse, yet attach us not; but the hall, the old hall,—the old, hospitable hall,—had been as a friend in all seasons, and to all comers, and its mirth had been as open to all as the heart of its last owner! My eyes wandered from the place where it had been, and the tall, lone, gray tower, consecrated to my ill-fated namesake, and in which my own apartments had been situated, rose like the last of a warrior band, stern, gaunt, and solitary, over the ruins around. ”

“ If love exists for me no longer, I know well that the memory of that which has been is to me far more than a living love is to others; and perhaps there is no passion so full of tender, of soft, and of hallowing associations as the love which is stamped by death. If I have borne much, and my spirit has worked out its earthly end in travail and in tears, yet I would not forego the lessons which my life has bequeathed me, even though they be deeply blended with sadness and regret. ”

“ He has his frailties and infirmities,—and in saying that, I only imply that he is human,—but he is wise, reflective, generous, and affectionate; add these qualities to a dazzling wit, and a genius deep, if not sublime, and what wonder that we forget something of vanity and something of fretfulness,—effects rather of the frame than of the mind. The wonder only is that, with a body the victim to every disease, crippled and imbecile from the cradle, his frailties should not be more numerous, and his care, his thoughts, and attentions not wholly limited to his own complaints. ”

“ I saw by the countenance of the servant who admitted me that all was well: so I asked no question; I flew up the stairs; I broke into Isora’s chamber, and in an instant she was in my arms. Ah, Love, Love! wherefore art thou so transitory a pilgrim on the earth,—an evening cloud which hovers on our horizon, drinking the hues of the sun, that grows ominously brighter as it verges to the shadow and the night, and which, the moment that sun is set, wanders on in darkness or descends in tears? ”

“ In truth, Isora was one well calculated to sustain and to rivet romance. The cast of her beauty was so dreamlike, and yet so varying: her temper was so little mingled with the common characteristics of woman; it had so little of caprice, so little of vanity, so utter an absence of all jealous and all angry feeling; it was so made up of tenderness and devotion, and yet so imaginative and fairy-like in its fondness,—that it was difficult to bear only the sentiments of earth for one who had so little of earth’s clay. ”

“ Late enough, my child; the warm sun has gone down; and ‘tis a good time to close one’s eyes, when all without looks gray and chill: methinks it is easier to wish thee farewell, Morton, when I see thy face indistinctly. I am glad I shall not die in the daytime. Give me thy hand, my child, and tell me that thou art not angry with thine old uncle for thwarting thee in that love business. I have heard tales of the girl, too, which made me glad, for thy sake, that it is all off, though I might not tell thee of them before. ‘Tis very dark, Morton. ”

“ When the inspired writers call upon us to praise our Creator, do they not say to us,—‘Be joyful in your God?’”
“How can we be joyful with the Judgment-Day ever before us?” said Aubrey; “how can we be joyful” (and here a dark shade crossed his countenance, and his lip trembled with emotion) “while the deadly passions of this world plead and rankle at the heart? Oh, none but they who have known the full blessedness of a commune with Heaven can dream of the whole anguish and agony of the conscience, when it feels itself sullied by the mire and crushed by the load of earth!” ”

“ Although scarcely four and twenty when I entered the Czar’s service, my habits of intimacy with men much older; my customary gravity, reserve, and thought; my freedom, since Isora’s death, from youthful levity or excess; my early entrance into the world; and a countenance prematurely marked with the lines of reflection and sobered by its hue,—made me appear considerably older than I was. I kept my own counsel, and affected to be so: youth is a great enemy to one’s success; and more esteem is often bestowed upon a wrinkled brow than a plodding brain. ”

“ Swift shall wait; Heavens! how he would rage if he heard me. I was going to say what a pity it is that that man should have so much littleness of vanity; but I should have uttered a very foolish sentiment if I had!”
“And why?”
“Because, if he had not so much littleness perhaps he would not be so great: what but vanity makes a man write and speak, and slave, and become famous? Alas!” and here St. John’s countenance changed from gayety to thought; “‘tis a melancholy thing in human nature that so little is good and noble, both in itself and in its source! ”

“ With the success of this project terminates my last scheme of Ambition.
Here, then, at the age of thirty-four, I conclude the history of my life. Whether in the star which, as I now write, shines in upon me, and which a romance, still unsubdued, has often dreamed to be the bright prophet of my fate, something of future adventure, suffering, or excitement is yet predestined to me; or whether life will muse itself away in the solitudes which surround the home of my past childhood and the scene of my present retreat,—creates within me but slight food for anticipation or conjecture. ”

“ The one a fire that burns, without enlightening beyond a most narrow circle, and whose lustre is tracked by what it ruins, and fed by what it consumes; the other a luminary, whose light, not so dazzling in its rays, spreads over a world, and is noted, not for what it destroys, but for what it vivifies and creates.
I cannot say that it was much to my credit that, while I thought the Regent’s condescension towards me natural enough, I was a little surprised by the favour shown me by the Czar. At Paris, I had seemed to be the man of pleasure: that alone was enough to charm Philip of Orleans. ”

“ Brought up alone, music, and books—few, though not ill-chosen, for Shakspeare was one, and the one which had made upon her the most permanent impression, and perhaps had coloured her temperament with its latent but rich hues of poetry—constituted her amusement and her studies.
But who knows not that a woman’s heart finds its fullest occupation within itself? There lies its real study, and within that narrow orbit, the mirror of enchanted thought reflects the whole range of earth. Loneliness and meditation nursed the mood which afterwards, with Isora, became love itself. ”

“ I had insensibly loved the board which echoed with applause at my sallies, and the comrades who, while they deprecated my satire, had been complaisant enough to hail it as wit. One of my weaknesses is a love of show, and I had gratified a feeling not the less cherished because it arose from a petty source, in obtaining for my equipages, my mansion, my banquets, the celebrity which is given no less to magnificence than to fame: now I grew indifferent alike to the signs of pomp, and to the baubles of taste; praise fell upon a listless ear, and (rare pitch of satiety!) ”

“ The deadliest foe to love is not change nor misfortune nor jealousy nor wrath, nor anything that flows from passion or emanates from fortune; the deadliest foe to it is custom! With custom die away the delusions and the mysteries which encircle it; leaf after leaf, in the green poetry on which its beauty depends, droops and withers, till nothing but the bare and rude trunk is left. With all passion the soul demands something unexpressed, some vague recess to explore or to marvel upon,—some veil upon the mental as well as the corporeal deity. ”